The walls of London were ahead of him, and Gresham eased his pace as more and more people appeared on the roadway. He grinned inwardly as he remembered his own decisive part in the Essex rebellion — or, rather, the decisive role he had played in making sure that the so-called rebellion never even spluttered into danger, but fizzled out with hardly more noise than a musket shot. It had made interesting reading, when he had written it down and had it copied, and if Gresham's version had become known he felt it likely that Cecil's thin head might be joining Essex's on a pike. It had been one of his better moments when he had presented a copy, the true account of the Essex rebellion with proof of Cecil's treachery, to Cecil himself. He had trumped it, if it needed doing, by the casual mention of the fact that copies of that and numerous other papers, as well as being lodged in a variety of secret places dotted around England, could also be found in the Papal archive. They were to be held in secret until removed by Gresham himself, their early release authorised only, if Gresham were to die. Cecil blanched at that, showing emotion for almost the first time since Gresham had known him. The cellars below the Vatican were one of the very few areas Robert Cecil knew he would never penetrate, and there was a delicious touch of spice in the business by virtue of the fact both men knew that Gresham's access to this unique repository of documents had come through his having done some of Cecil's dirty work in Italy. It was poetic justice.
There was another reason for Gresham's hatred of Cecil, if another was needed. Two years ago Cecil had testified against and betrayed the friendship of the one man Henry Gresham had ever called master. Sir Walter Raleigh was the greatest man Gresham had ever known, a scholar poet, soldier, sailor, courtier and wit. He had saved Gresham's life. When the great wheel of fortune had seemed destined to plunge Raleigh down to the depths, and he had looked to his friends to rescue him from the sucking bog of Court politics, Cecil had betrayed him. Raleigh had been convicted on a trumped-up charge in a court hearing so biased it had shocked Europe. Now Raleigh, larger than life and leader of leaders, was languishing and ague-ridden in the Tower. Raleigh's wife had helped bring up Cecil's ailing child, taking him in alongside her own lusty, bawling brat and seeming to breathe life into his thin frame. This was how Cecil rewarded those who preserved his life blood, by imprisoning them in the Bloody Tower. Gresham could understand a man who betrayed his principles. He could never forgive a man who betrayed his friends.
The towers and roofs of Whitehall Palace were ahead of him now. Whitehall was Cecil's home, its labyrinthine passages an emblem for the devious and complex mind that dominated the Court more than any other. This was the moment of calm before the storm, the moment before a great venture when time froze and the last chance to turn away beckoned. Gresham's horse had come to a halt. Gently, he urged it forward. In an uncertain world, Gresham knew only two things. He despised Cecil, and whatever task Cecil had for him would bring grief and hardship in its trail. He also knew that he could not refuse the excitement of what Cecil might offer, or run too freely the risk of what he might reveal.
A surly groom took his horse, and Gresham stretched his muscles as he stood on the cobbled courtyard. Gresham was sure it was going to be Catholics this time round. He dreaded Catholics. They were what he did least well. The woman who had brought him up, raised the bastard son of Sir Thomas Gresham, was a Catholic. With her breast milk had come the rosary bouncing off his infant nose. He hated the Catholic business more than any other. The Marlowe business, the Essex rebellion, that tragic creature Mary and most of all his dealings with the Armada had seemed real. His dealings with the Catholics had seemed sad by comparison. Early on in his accidental career he had met a Catholic priest who had seemed to him the nearest thing to a saint on this earth that he would ever know. Months later he had watched that saint hung until near gasping dead, seen his heart cut out of his body and that long-suffering and frail body chopped into four pieces. To Gresham, who was no longer sure that there was a God, the shrieks a man uttered in his death throes were a single language, spoken alike among Roman or Protestant. The mutilation of human flesh in one cause or another seemed just another form of human sacrifice, the practice so widely condemned by Christianity.
Cecil was courteous, as ever. Grey-haired, the rich clothing he wore could only partially hide the deformity in his spine. His desk was littered with papers, and the paintings on the wall showed both his passion for art and his ability to pay for the best.
'Good morning to you, sir,' he had intoned, motioning Gresham to a stool.
The voice was flat, expressionless. The eyes were gimlet-hard, like a rat's. Cecil had a thin, mean figure, and a thin, mean face. His long cloak hid the ludicrously short legs that were such a joke in the marketplaces. There were many who saw a warped body as testimony to a warped mind. How right they were, thought Gresham, who had met many with both afflictions but never anyone who combined them to such effect as Robert Cecil. He moved in a manner that gave least cause to show the wrench in his neck, hidden by an exceptionally large collar on the cloak and an extravagant ruff. He seemed permanently cold, yet he met his network of spies in the largest and coldest room in his Palace. A huge, carved stone fireplace held the most meagre of fires, spluttering to cope with the cheapest of sea coal in the early morning and producing far more smoke than heat.
'How go your affairs in Cambridge?' enquired Cecil solicitously.
'Well, my Lord,' replied Gresham, outwardly deferential and inwardly impatient for the fencing to end. 'The College grows by the month.' Cecil was Chancellor of the University; another power base.
'So good to hear!' mused Cecil with total insincerity, pouring wine into a goblet and pushing it across the table to Gresham. The goblet was gold. It shone forth in this dreary room like sunshine after rain. The wine was cat's piss. Cecil only spent money on things that lasted, like the goblet or fine paintings. On something like the wine, that would be urine in a matter of hours, he spent as little as possible.
Gresham smiled, took the goblet and raised it in a toast. In doing so, he sniffed the wine, and without his smile shifting at all put the goblet down in front of him, its contents untasted. They would remain so throughout the meeting. Even a badly brought-up dose of the pox would have revolted had the liquid in the glass been poured over it.
Cecil's expression did not change, though he certainly noted the rejected goblet. He sat back in his splendid chair, gazing out through the narrow window with its view of the river. His guest sat on a bare, three-legged stool, with one leg shorter than the others. It was all there was to sit on, except the near-throne in which Cecil sat upright.
'We live in wicked times, Sir Henry. Wicked times.' Cecil sighed. There was no goblet or wine for him. In all their meetings Henry Gresham had never seen food or drink pass Cecil's lips.
Well, mused Gresham, you should know, as having created no small measure of that wickedness yourself.
'There are those in our midst who seek to deny the most basic, the most central commandments of Our Lord. Those who seek to do so whilst holding positions of very real power. Wicked men, Sir Henry. Truly evil men. Do you not agree?'
Catholics. It had to be Catholics. Damn, Gresham thought, anything but Catholics.
'You know of Sir Francis Bacon, I believe?' Cecil enquired, responding to Gresham's silence, leaning forward. It was his most beguiling gesture. In leaning forward the collar of his cloak drooped and the ruff dropped slightly, revealing his warped neck. 'Indeed, I think you have dined with him?'
Bacon? Bacon? Gresham's mind, behind its public mask and the half-smile, was in a turmoil. Bacon had been accused of most things, except being a Papist. Bacon's intelligence was matched only by his ambition. He had spent a lifetime trying to get inside the Queen's linen and was now trying to get inside the King's. Gresham hoped it was cleaner than the outside of the monarch. Bacon was just another man of talent trying to compensate for a lack of birth, driven by the same ambition that drove all those who came to Court. What had Bacon to
do with the state of the nation?
'He has been to College, my Lord,' Gresham replied light-heartedly. 'He talks well,' he added dismissively. Let Cecil make the running.
'It is not his talk that concerns me, Sir Henry,' replied Cecil. He was sitting back now, ready to launch the blow. 'It is his sodomy.'
Gresham's face did not flicker. His expression did not falter. His pulse missed not a beat. He held down a massive urge to burst out laughing.
'Is it proven, my Lord?' enquired Gresham, his expression serious.
'No,' replied Cecil, looking coldly at Gresham. 'It is not. Yet if it is true, I must have it proven. I believe you to be the man to find such proof.'
Sodomy was a capital offence, certainly. The growing band of Puritans shouted the evils of fornication at an increasing number of street corners, to the hilarity and amusement of the populace. When they denounced the double sin of sodomy, the crowds ceased their laughter and joined in the shouting. Yet more and more the fashionable end of society was turning to experiment, be it with the new weed tobacco, strange concoctions of wine and herbs or the practice of sex. Sodomy was ill-advised. It was hardly the stuff of which the survival of nations was composed.
'I hope, my Lord,' responded Gresham carefully, 'that I have some experience of finding proof. Yet are you not better advised to set one of similar inclination on to this project? Why not set a thief to catch a thief? Am I to believe this is an urgent matter?'
'You might consider my example, Sir Henry. I believe very little.' Cecil's eyes bored into Gresham. Gresham did not flinch, the infuriating half-smile still on his lips. 'I observe a great deal. I merely use that which I have.'
Touchй", thought Gresham. Or if not that, stalemate.
All in all, it left them in their usual state of even balance. Both despised each other, yet had need of what each other had to offer. Each one could destroy the other, but knew the destruction was likely to be mutual. In that room Gresham was in the presence of raw power, pure and simple, and Henry Gresham could not resist the taste and smell of it.
Yet to be set on to determine the destination of Bacon's prick? After a frantic summons to travel without delay and post-haste to London? Bacon was fiercely ambitious. That much was widely known. He was in debt. That was also widely-known. And most known of all was the fact that he had one of the best brains in Christendom. He was related to Cecil, but the relationship, complicated by too many embattled women, had not been easy. It was also rumoured that, in common with Kit Marlowe — an earlier tragedy — he thought those 'who liked not boys were fools'. It was all good stuff for gossip in the ordinary and the tavern, but even if Bacon was proven to have buggered every boy in Europe it would hardly set England tottering on its constitutional heels. Essex had been Bacon's patron, of course, before Bacon had turned against him and even helped in his prosecution. Was this Cecil paying back an old debt, slowly destroying the last vestiges of those who had supported his old enemy Essex?
His scalp started to itch unbearably, even though he would swear no flea had made its entry to his head. He refused the overwhelming urge to scratch his itch.
'I will do as you ask, my Lord,' said Gresham calmly. 'It is my choice to do so.' Their eyes locked for a brief, fiery clash, and then both went dark. 'Yet I think there are greater issues than one man's buggery, in the present times.'
Cecil mouthed an insincere farewell, failing to rise to show Gresham to the door. There had to be a deeper reason for all this, thought Gresham as he left. At a guess, Bacon had offended Cecil, or was coming to be seen as a threat to Cecil's power in some way. This had to be personal. Would Gresham help destroy the man if it were so? He would see. He had felt no compunction working against Essex and bringing him down, not least of all because he saw Essex as both a threat to the nation and a lifelong enemy of Sir Walter Raleigh. If Bacon seemed a fly not worth the squashing, Gresham would leave him in peace and return an infuriatingly bland report to Cecil.
A servant appeared from nowhere and held open the carved and varnished door. As he passed through Gresham felt a distinct increase in temperature. Was it the room? Or was any room occupied by Robert Cecil colder and darker by virtue of its occupant?
'God's blood!' yelled the informer.
The cheap red wine had spilled out of his mouth and across one of the weeping ulcers that ringed his lips.
If Gresham was disturbed by the blasphemy, he did not show it. He leant casually back in his chair and motioned invitingly to the jug and the man's half-empty tankard. He carefully laid his arm in between some of the more poisonous stains on the table and gazed at the half-drunk informer.
'So have you news of Bacon's household?' asked Gresham patiently. Gresham's enquiries after Bacon had coursed out through the underworld of London. This was the latest lead that had emerged from its sewers.
The informer grunted, reached for the jug and poured himself a life-threatening dose of vinegar. He drew back on it, careful this time to make no spillage. He made as if to wipe his lips, remembered in time the damaged flesh thereabouts, and poked out instead a thick red tongue to gather up the residue.
'Yes, I do. Truthfully, I do. The little man has… visitors. Young visitors.'
The conspiratorial tone he sought to adopt was spoilt somewhat by the vast belch of foul breath that ended his sentence. The explosion of air seemed to rock him back, like a loose-shotted cannon.
Little man? Sir Francis Bacon was not particularly short, though certainly no giant. Those who envied the size and scope of his brain tended to vilify his build, as if the latter reflected the former. It was a common mistake of the time. If it had been true, the pathetic stunted and warped figure of Robert Cecil would not contain the most powerful brain in the country.
'The names of these young visitors?'
The informer's eyes were still glazed with the shock of his own eruption. God forbid he might fart next, thought Gresham. If he did it was likely to have lumps in it.
'Names? Names?' The man took another swig. 'These things have no names. They're sweepings, sweepings. Bastards taken at birth from a whore's bed, or saved from the river.'
The brown and swirling waters of the Thames bore a frequent cargo of new- or still-born children. They were meant to be from the loins of the whores who had matched London's stupendous growth. Gresham cared not to think how many well-born casement windows had seen a private cargo despatched into the waters of Lethe. All new-born appeared alike when swelled by their feast of filthy river water.
'If not names, then witnesses. Who witnesses this nightly progress?'
The informer allowed an expression of alarm to cross his eyes and ravaged face. He took another half-swig, his moderation reflecting a new sense of danger.
'Why, the servants, of course. All the servants.'
'And the Gateman will testify to this? The other servants will testify?'
'Why… why… they may, of course. Of course they may.'
Gresham's voice was at its most silky soft. He placed his other arm between a stain that might have been blood and one that was certainly grease, and leant forward.
'Without testimony those visitors are phantoms, just ghosts upon the wind.'
His voice turned from summer sun to the glint of blade in passageway.
'As you, my friend, are so much piss and wind.'
He came to his feet. He was an impressive figure, five foot eight or so and with an easy muscle rippling below the superbly tailored doublet, hose and cloak.
His figure, clothed all in black, loomed over the informer like Death himself. And now the voice became ice, cold beyond belief. It froze the informer, even as it released him. As Gresham spoke, he heard the tinkle of urine falling to the floor from the terrified man, smelt the hot, raw stink of steaming piss.
'You will return here, a fortnight from now. You will bring names, names of young sodomites or names of servants who will testify against their master. Or you will bring nothing. On what you bring you will be judged. Leav
e. Now.'
Gresham sank back in his chair, a black mood of despair threatening to overwhelm him. The informant, humiliated by his wetting himself and terrified beyond belief, fled, muttering incoherently.
This was going nowhere, Gresham thought. I am facing a man of unbounded intelligence, and all I have to question is fools.
'More work for the laundress.' The gruff voice was Mannion's. Built like a Cathedral, he had stationed himself just outside the door, opening it to let the informer out and himself in.
'More work for the chambermaid,' muttered Gresham, nodding to the steaming yellow pool on the floor beneath the table. He doubted she or the landlord would bother. The floor had seen much worse. There was a virtual history of London drunkenness etched on to the worn boards.
Mannion waited. If his master wished to talk, he would do so. Mannion would listen. Sometimes his master needed to talk and hear no reply. Sometimes he spoke and needed to debate. Mannion would respond, in kind. He would know which it was and, if it seemed proper to do so, would speak.
There was silence, Gresham sipping thoughtfully at his own goblet. As ever he had made sure he had his own wine, not the spew served to the informer. It was the best the inn had to offer, which was not very much. Like much of the City, it was brash, and new and quite raw, and like the City it had a taste of something much older, something sweetly rotten, beneath it.
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